


seconds

by sealestial



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Gen, Warning for graphic depictions of dying in space.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-30
Updated: 2016-10-30
Packaged: 2018-08-27 21:18:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8417083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sealestial/pseuds/sealestial
Summary: Keith’s voice was rough and ruined, probably from inhaling the smoke that seeped from various parts of broken machinery.“Thanks. For everything.”He turned off the comm. [the seconds before keith dies(?) in space]





	

**Author's Note:**

> this is my first fic for the voltron fandom. it's been a while since i've posted fic at all, and this was mostly a vent piece for me. i want to thank you for taking the time to just look at it, and hope you enjoy it! also, i apologize in advance.

_130_

The ion cannon of a Galra ship tore a chunk out of the red lion, making it _scream_ both internally and externally. Mechanical fluid dripped like blood into the blackness of space. Sparks shot out of ruptured paneling and wires like dying stars; an omen to the fate of Red and her paladin. Alarms blared in the cockpit—the light becoming a sickly shade of red that reminded Keith more of drying blood than of the fire his lion thrived in. Maybe it was his own blood coating the cockpit. He wasn’t sure. Red screamed again, and Keith screamed with her. Both lion and paladin watched as the ion cannon charged once more. Both knew that no one else would get to them in time. Red was crippled. Keith was immobile; pinned to the pilot’s chair with a wicked piece of Red’s paneling that had sliced cleanly through both his armor and his flesh. He couldn’t feel the wound anymore. He knew that wasn’t a good thing.

Black spots drifted at the corners of Keith’s vision. In his head, he could hear Red’s outpouring of _rage and agony and love and connection and questioning._

 

_100_

A deep buzzing noise reverberated between the stars, through the Galra ships, through Red, and through Keith. It was a droning that heralded doom. It was the ion cannon, fully charged.

Clumsily, Keith forced himself to activate the comm in his helmet. The visor was irreparably cracked, but the comm was still functional. He immediately heard the concern of his fellow paladins, Lance’s screaming at him to _not die yet you stupid mullet,_ and Shiro’s quieter, already grief-stricken murmur of Keith’s name. Pidge sounded furious. Hunk told him to _hang in there man, we’re almost there._

Keith’s voice was rough and ruined, probably from inhaling the smoke that seeped from various parts of broken machinery.

“Thanks. For everything.”

He turned off the comm.

 

_90_

Humans could survive ninety seconds in the vacuum of space. Keith hadn’t thought of that small factoid since before the Kerberos mission; before he’d been expelled from the Garrison. He wondered if major injuries shortened that time. Bubbles would form in his blood.  It’d feel like he was burning from the inside out, his instructors had told him so long ago.

They’d been right.

The ion cannon fired. For a brief window—it was beautiful. The floating debris that surrounded the ships reflected the light, the heat. Metal glimmered before it was disintegrated. Then the beam slammed into Red, making her roar and scream like nothing Keith had ever heard before. The impact flung them to the outer edges of the battlefield and beyond, leaving them careening through space. Keith was dislodged from the pilot’s chair as they spun, ripping the sharp metal from his abdomen with a sickening sucking sound. Droplets of blood floated around him. They bounced against Red’s sparking control panels.

He couldn’t hear Red anymore, Keith vaguely noticed. She was gone. His head was left bereft of any reassuring purrs, or any hope or instruction on a way out of the situation.

Keith was alone when his blood began to bubble, when he slipped through a ragged hole torn through the cockpit, and when he realized he was going to die.

 

_60_

The vacuum rushed in through the cracks of his visor, stealing his oxygen and setting his body on fire. He jerked and gasped uselessly, trying to breathe on instinct. There was no atmosphere here. Nothing to catch him or patch the holes in his suit and the cracks in his visor. He was alone.

Red’s mutilated body floated a few hundred feet away from him; both of them still sailing through the void between stars. He was glad that she wouldn’t hear him screaming as his chest contracted and his limbs spasmed. Keith had always known space was cold and space was cruel, his own life had been the same far too often, but he’d loved it anyway.

Now, the stars that he’d so treasured and had drawn comfort from were cold and uncaring. Flaming, gaseous bits of space couldn’t care about one orphan from Earth who’d lived out of sheer spite and the thought that one day—one day he’d be up amongst them.

Keith thought of their cruelty, and replaced it with the warm faces of his fellow paladins. Of the surrogate family he’d unwittingly found all because something had drawn him to the desert. He remembered finding Pidge at what passed for three am on the castle ship, and giving them a blanket and a pillow after carrying them to the couch. He remembered Hunk trying his hardest to overcome his motion sickness, and giving him advice that Keith had learned the hard way. He remembered Lance, staring at the coordinates of Earth with the cosmos in the background, and how he’d murmured “I miss it too.” He remembered Shiro; finding him again, knowing him again, getting what passed for tea for the both of them when sleep refused to come. He remembered Coran, and how the kind Altean had walked Keith through activating and deactivating the training deck on his own. He remembered Allura, who’d hugged him once and made him wonder if that was what _home_ felt like.

His vision darkened even more.

 

_30_

Keith was never one to go quietly, but with the void staring him in the face and a vacuum robbing his body of all its’ vital processes, he had no choice. There was no screaming while he was suffocated by the utter _lack_ of everything necessary to survival. There were no tears.

He looked to the stars, to the nebulas, to the cosmic dust that might hold the beginnings of life, and did his best to smile. The universe wouldn’t forgive him, and he wouldn’t forgive it, but destiny had given him a family. For however briefly they’d been hale and whole, it was more than he ever thought he’d have. Orphans like him didn’t have families. They had people they associated with, but usually nothing more—but he’d found more. He’d clung to _more_ with all of his being, and followed Shiro to a rag-tag bunch of misfits who loved with all they had; who taught him to do the same.

His consciousness faded.

 

_0_

A flash of blue. An agonized cry. A body being plucked from the stars by a lion the color of the sea. A realization that maybe there was _still time._ A frantic rush to a castle made a ship. A prayer.

 

_-130_

Keith Kogane inhaled.

**Author's Note:**

> if you'd like to talk about gays in space, my tumblr is [here](https://sealestial.tumblr.com/)


End file.
